Weekly Report: Our law code vs. Hammurabi's

"Guess what mom? Spiders don't have bums." Said the very observant Claire on our walk the other day. Do you want to know what else we learned this week? Do you really?

Actually, we were all pretty fascinated with the Babylonians this week. In STOW we learned about Hammurabi and his code (1792 B.C.). This was the first written set of laws that are known and they were unusual because everyone had to follow them---rich, poor, soldiers, farmers, merchants, even kings. Here are a couple of the laws that we found particularly interesting:

• If the son has done some great evil to his father, his father must forgive him the first time. But if he has done something evil twice, his father can throw him out.
• If a thief steals a cow, a sheep, a donkey a pig, or a goat, he will pay ten times what it is worth. If he doesn't have any money to pay with, he will be put to death.
• If a doctor operates on a patient and the patient dies, the doctor's hand will be cut off.
• If a builder builds a house, and that house collapses and kills the owner, the builder will be put to death.
• If a robber is caught breaking a hole into a house so that he can get in a steal, he will be put to death in front of the hole.

The kids made their own law code "stele" this week, this is what it looked like:
(we didn't use stone, just poster board AND these are their very own laws, no prompting from me!)
We also built our own ziggurat (an ancient temple used to offer sacrifices):
In addition to the reading, map work, and coloring pages on this unit we also watched a good video about Mesopotamia from the library: "Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Mesopotamia" produced by Schlessinger media.

We've also enjoyed the rain and the cooler weather this week and to celebrate the coming of Autumn we made pumpkin cookies!

On the subject of pumpkins, because of the rain this week our very neglected pumpkin patch in the back yard is now thriving. We'll see if we actually get any big enough to pie.

We have all been fairly healthy this week. Those of us with sensitive sinuses (me,Elise and Anna) have stuffy noses. Anna is cutting 4 teeth...which might account for some of her orneriness. TEETH! This is exciting...Samuel's teeth are finally coming in! The two upper side teeth that need to push his to front teeth together. He's hoping he doesn't loose his incredible whistling ability...that would be a tragedy.

AND...here's the written work break-down:

Scripture reading: Alma 50-51 How very, very quickly we forget the Lord. How very frustrating it must have been for Moroni. Why would any one want a king after the peace and success they had? What are some of the things we can do to guard our own freedoms? Teancum was another very cool Nephite.

Samuel:

• Saxon 5/4 lessons 21-23 (fractions, lines, segments, rays, angles)
• Language Arts: Lesson 2: homonyms, possessive nouns (singular and plural), Amendments to the Constitution.
• Spelling: light, bright, might, sight, flight, blight, slight, tight, establishment, prohibiting, necessary, violated, infamous, indictment
• Memorization: America (verse 2)
• Reading: "Farmer Boy", by Laura Ingles Wilder; "Castle Diary: Journal of Tobias Burgess, Page" by Richard Platt was a favorite this week, in addition to the many other library books
• Journal writing
• Science: Why leaves change color.
  
• Piano: Half-Time Show, The Lonely Pine
• STOW: Chapter 7 Hammurabi and the Babylonians
• Cub Scouts: Worked on Achievement 10, 11

Elise:

• Saxon2 lessons 16-20 assessment 3 (pictographs, odd & even numbers, geometric shapes, identifying fractional parts of a whole)
• Language Arts: More Homonyms
• Spelling: eat, ear, treat, leaf, bead, peach, wheat, dream, clean
• Reading: "Frog and Toad are Friends" by Arnold Lobel (one of our favorites)
• Journal writing
• Science: nature walks. changes in the season.
  
• STOW: see above
• Piano: "Hey, Mr. Half-note Dot"

Claire: Lesson 3 in "100 Easy Lessons" , Activities related to the letter G. Counting to 15.

Anna: Additional words--Bay BEE (baby) Anna sure loves her baby doll and she makes sure everyone knows it! Just this week she started saying bay BEE instead of just Bah Bah.